SolarCat02 wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Miszou wrote: »

By that logic, DPS that cannot switch to a tank setup also have a bad build, but no-one cares because if you need a tank for a dungeon you just get a real one and then make the tank change to DPS if necessary...

Sure thing. Any DD should be able to tank if they have the right tanking gearset in their bags. I carry full tank gear on two DD characters, and a shield on my other two if they ever need to off-tank anything. I make it a point that every one of my characters can be a DD and can be a support role, whether it's a tank or healer.

The issue is that tanks are a group support role. It makes absolutely no sense to be a tank when you're soloing: who are you supporting, and what is the point of holding aggro? So tanks, out of sheer necessity, need to be able to switch to non-tank simply because it makes no sense to be in a group support role when you have no group. There is no need for a DD to switch to tanking. Though being able to fill a support role like healing or tanking does make finding groups so much easier. And doing multiple roles on a character makes me a better player in general by way of giving me better familiarity with the class and how the various roles work on that class.

What if a tank enjoys the tanking playstyle even when solo? That seems to be a good enough reason to tank solo to me. When your solo, there is less need to be optimised, so long as you can complete the content you are doing.

Your assuming everyone that plays wants to play at 100% efficiency, even when solo. You know what they say about assuming!!

It's tough to play solo as a tank. Most obvious example, Harvesters are a DPS check. If you want to play solo as a tank, you need a way to pass those - a good healing debuff for starters.

Plus lots and lots of patience. Fights take forever, and so does your experience gain as a result.

harvester are not a DPS check,as long as you kill the orbs that heal them with a good aoe skill,you can take all the time you want to kill them.

Averya_Teira wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I would love it if both Puncture/Pierce Armor and Inner Fire gained a "while slotted" bonus that increases threat generated from all your attacks and abilities by 150%. Ransack Morph would lose the Taunt and threat increase for the rare number of players who actually use it as an actual attack.

This, but make it 300-500% or something because DPS just do so much more damage than tanks, 150% is not going to cut it.

I really like ESO as a whole, but the grouping experience is awful. I understand people that like GW2 style of content will love ESO's grouping mechanics, but I prefer a ''normal'' grouping experience like *cough* WoW *cough* with specific roles that are actually required.

Right now, you don't even need tanks and healers for 99% of content, just run 4 DPS with 1-2 people running Vigor and that's it.

Makes me really sad because I don't see myself playing long term (when a few MMOs and single player games I am waiting for come out) because DPSing is the role I really dislike and it's basically ESO's entire playstyle...

Agree,but you know what?It wasn't like that before,the trinity was very solid before and tanks were needed.Somewhere they made a big change that messed up the trinity and now it looks more like GW2.I prefer solid trinity than GW2 no trinity.People claim that the change that messed the trinity was the removal of soft caps on your stats.

code65536 wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

@code65536 I think you are looking at this too much from the point of view of someone who has played the game for a long time and has a lot of resources. It's great that your VR1 toons have multiple armor sets, but for someone playing through the first time, ONE blue armor set might be the limit of their resources. It was for me. (Dwarven oil seemed SO expensive!) One set had to do everything I needed to do on that character.

I am in 100% agreement about what it takes to be a good tank, but you are essentially outlining a scenario where a new chum leveling a tank not only takes longer to get there, but in some cases gets less loot and they have higher expenses just to play their chosen role. It's not encouraging to new players at all.

You have to remember the context of this conversation. My post was a rebuttal against someone who claims that doing multiple roles makes for a worse tank. It does not--in my experience, it makes you a better, more versatile tank.

Fair enough. Playing multiple roles certainly helped me even though at best I am a "good enough" DD for dungeons.

The jury is out still on the tanking changes for DB until people start tinkering with builds, but I fear the viability of gear swap tanks is going to take a significant hit.

NBrookus wrote: »

I fear the viability of gear swap tanks is going to take a significant hit.

Yea, it means I'm going to have to eat 3K CP respec costs each time I swap. Thanks, Wrobel.

code65536 wrote: »

LinearParadox wrote: »

Cously wrote: »

A good way to motivate tanks would be boost S&S DPS...

NO. Just... no. Stop making this game DPS: Online. Yes damage is important, but it's not the end-all beat-all it's being made to be.
I have, VR 16 and mostly fully geared....
A Sorc Mag DPS,
A Temp mag healer
A DK tank.
(I also have a VR3 Stam NB that I'm waiting on the vet rank removal for XP)

I can complete more difficult dungeons like WGT and ICP. My magplar has completed vMA without using the sigils. I understand dealing damage, I understand healing, I understand tanking and my builds aren't bad. I'm not crying about tanks because I can't do/don't understand anything else.
Tank are in a BAD SPOT.

No other type of build suffers the same lack of deversity, lack of adaptability, lack of use in many situations, etc.
They have a poor toolkit for their job in terms of sustain and threat generation, and often their already poor threat generation is completely nullified by untauntable bosses.
I'm sick and tired of tanks being thought of as tissue; to be used on the rare occasion you need them then thrown away and either excluded from the group or forced to reskill, respec, regear, reallocate champ points, etc all to adapt to a glaring hole in the game the despite ZoS trying to claim that all content can be completed by all types of groups, that's just not true.

Think of it this way, as many players have said above...
DPS can off-tank quite easily through active mitigation forms like blocking, dodging, shielding.
DPS also often have abilities like Swallow Soul, Vigor, Rally, etc that help them heal themselves and often others as well.
Healers can DPS a little because there's resource pool Scaling and many also take some spell/weapon damage as that scales their heals as well.
Healers can also often 'heal tank' for a limited time, providing they don't get burst down, by just mass healing through damage. It's not optimal by anyears but it can be done.
ALL of this is WITHOUT switching spec or gear.

Now... what do tanks have like that? Yeah. I rest my case.

The problem is that group content is tuned such that a dedicated tank isn't needed.

Yes, there are pieces of group content where you absolutely must have a good tank. Namely trials and vICP, but this is not true for most group content.

But they also can't tune boss damage too high because there is a wide gulf in the capabilities of tanks. I PUGed the vet Fungal pledge last night on my healer, and it was a very rough run in part because the tank was not good at mitigating damage, so I needed to heal him a lot (when I tank vFG, I require almost no support from the healer), and with lackluster DPS in the group, it meant that I was trying to juggle between keeping the tank alive and providing off-DPS to shore up the weak DPS. We got through it in the end, but it was a mess. And in my experience, PUG tanks are more likely to be like the one I encountered last night.

So while we complain that there's no need for tanks in many dungeons, ZOS's hands are kinda tied here: If we do tune those dungeons to require good solid tanks, we'll soon have many people who will simply be unable to complete the content, like the PUG that I was in last night.

It would help, though, if we didn't get dubious changes like the stam regen nerf. I adapted to that nerf without too much difficulty, but for a large portion of the player base who have not yet gotten enough tanking experience, it made tanking more difficult and contributes (in part) to the wide range that we see in tanking capability.

To make tanking relevant again, ZOS needs to do away with things like the stam regen nerf and improving the tanking toolkit. And by rebuffing tanks, they then open up the possibility to tuning up content difficulty such that tanks are no longer optional. Unfortunately, the changes in DB aren't helping: at best, we're about where we were before, except now saddled with extra expenses and hassles to once again adapt.

It isn't just an experience issue though. Whole builds were damaged severely by the regen nerf while blocking. 0% regen essentially nullifies your access to stamina, making luminous shards vital for your healer, or conversely requiring you to be DK or NB (which isn't as good as it use to be with changes to the siphoning strikes). Sorcerer and Templar tanks really take a hit here, because their passive regeneration to stamina is 100% nullified, and the nerfs to blocking also make the blocking passives of DK and Templars significantly less valuable. In the case of DK though you have earthen heart passives that drastically make up for this. In a game where everyone can become a healer, some classes simply don't do as well as pure tanks. It also redefines what builds can be a tank (Stamplar Tank for instance is simply vastly inferior to a Magplar tank at this point). It can all be adapted to, but options have been destroyed, and I would argue unnecessarily so. I think most of us could have lived with reduced stamina regeneration while blocking, and that would have been significantly more fair to a lot of builds that use to work.

vladimilianoub17_ESO1 wrote: »

Its sad really.Pretty sad how devs know what the issue is but dont address it.I think is because fixing the issue takes a lot of time and resources and equal no money so instead lets just keep releasing DLC and forget that serious issues like this one exist.Is Also one of the reason i went from a hardcore ESO fan to now having a foot outside looking to come back to a game where i can tank,the role i love.

So, you're a masochist then?

But seriously, I do get you.
It's sad, they first make a specific build, then go run it over with 5 buses, a bike and a steamroller...

Thank you for your kind words.

remove the soft cap from armor....... VOILA

code65536 wrote: »

NBrookus wrote: »

I fear the viability of gear swap tanks is going to take a significant hit.

Yea, it means I'm going to have to eat 3K CP respec costs each time I swap. Thanks, Wrobel.

Ohhhh no... you don't have to swap aaaanything. Tanks can become viable DPS with just a gearswap riiight? There's no problem here. And they're just as powerful, that's why we have dedicated DPS characters, right? And the fact Tanks are the only ones expected to role-swap? Or that are completely despensable? That's totally fine. Nothing wrong here...

dtm_samuraib16_ESO wrote: »

3K... what's 3K?
3K is easily made?

It is not only about the cost, it is about having to go to the trouble to switch all the various tree points and paying for pleasure of it. On another thread of this kind I suggested the ability to save skill bar and CP settings.

This was not primarily for full on role swapping but for better tuning your tank based in situations. A good tank in dungeons is slow to progress in solo PVE and next to useless in PVP. If you could easily switch your CP and skill bars between 2 or 3 settings, that you have had to create yourself, it would make being a tank a lot more playable throughout the game.

I enjoy playing the tank role and will continue to do so but can see how a lot of people would not bother rolling one.

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

If ZOS nerf DD's defense, buff all the big bad bosses so that only a tank with max health, max resistance, full heavy armor and shield, and all skills slots for defense skills can tank, then it doesn't mean the role "tank" is more valuable, it just mean gear > skill. It will also add a huge gate for low levels tanks with lesser gear and skills (points).

IMO, in ESO, tank is not the guy who wear the heaviest armor, carring a huge shield, an have the biggest health pool. Tank in ESO are people who act as a tank: taunting, position mobs... That can be a guy in dps gear, but have taunt skill slot and know the mechanic well enough to know where to face the mobs, when to run, when to block, when to interrupt...

Does it mean I think tank are not important? NO! I like dungeon that require more tactic than just dps race. But I also prefer a system where everyone can do any role, as long as they know what they're doing. The knowledge of the mechanics, the skill of the player, should be more important than the gear. Yes a full heavy tank, with all tribute in health, will be safer, and leave more room for mistakes, but if one is good, they should be able to ACT like a tank without full tank setup.

The problem that comes in there is when you are running a pure tank like I myself do and a DPS with a taunt hits a boss with the taunt after you hand and is killed as a tank I get the flak for not doing my job. A DPS should not be running taunts and should be smashed if they are and taunt a boss. It is not their role to taunt, their roll is to do the damage. A tanks role is to taunt and keep the boss on them or the MOBs away from the healer. That is a role that is nearly pointless in the high DPS that going on now.

How about the solution no one here as suggested. Nerf DPS damage output. If they cannot kill the bosses so fast the bosses will last long enough to use their Mechanics and kill DPS as DPS should be glass cannons and not able to semi tank. This would give tanks our proper role back in tanking so the DPS are not targeted, as well as give the healer their role of healing over a long fight back.

One role should not be able to do 95% of the games content without the other 2 roles even needed at all, and with the rampant DPS output there is now they can.

AmberLaTerra wrote: »

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

If ZOS nerf DD's defense, buff all the big bad bosses so that only a tank with max health, max resistance, full heavy armor and shield, and all skills slots for defense skills can tank, then it doesn't mean the role "tank" is more valuable, it just mean gear > skill. It will also add a huge gate for low levels tanks with lesser gear and skills (points).

IMO, in ESO, tank is not the guy who wear the heaviest armor, carring a huge shield, an have the biggest health pool. Tank in ESO are people who act as a tank: taunting, position mobs... That can be a guy in dps gear, but have taunt skill slot and know the mechanic well enough to know where to face the mobs, when to run, when to block, when to interrupt...

Does it mean I think tank are not important? NO! I like dungeon that require more tactic than just dps race. But I also prefer a system where everyone can do any role, as long as they know what they're doing. The knowledge of the mechanics, the skill of the player, should be more important than the gear. Yes a full heavy tank, with all tribute in health, will be safer, and leave more room for mistakes, but if one is good, they should be able to ACT like a tank without full tank setup.

The problem that comes in there is when you are running a pure tank like I myself do and a DPS with a taunt hits a boss with the taunt after you hand and is killed as a tank I get the flak for not doing my job. A DPS should not be running taunts and should be smashed if they are and taunt a boss. It is not their role to taunt, their roll is to do the damage. A tanks role is to taunt and keep the boss on them or the MOBs away from the healer. That is a role that is nearly pointless in the high DPS that going on now.

How about the solution no one here as suggested. Nerf DPS damage output. If they cannot kill the bosses so fast the bosses will last long enough to use their Mechanics and kill DPS as DPS should be glass cannons and not able to semi tank. This would give tanks our proper role back in tanking so the DPS are not targeted, as well as give the healer their role of healing over a long fight back.

One role should not be able to do 95% of the games content without the other 2 roles even needed at all, and with the rampant DPS output there is now they can.

Why would a dps slot a taunt when there is already a tank in the group. The point in my post is "everyone can be a tank" if they know what they are doing, not "everyone in a group is a tank".

Silver_Strider wrote: »

The game is just too easy for tanks to be needed for most of it, not to mention all the negatives for playing a tank.

Needed? No.

But I sure as hell still want one. I did a run of vWGT yesterday tankless. Did we succeed? Yes, we did (which is kinda sad, that we can beat the 2nd hardest piece of 4-man content without a tank--we didn't read the book on Kena, though). Was it easier than doing it the traditional way, with a tank? Hell no. Things that used to be a walk in the park--Crematorial Guards or the titan before the Inhibitor whose untelegraphed 1-shot attack a DPS never experiences in tanked runs--were so much more difficult without a tank. And doing DPS was more difficult too without a tank holding stuff in place.

I have now done every piece of 4-man content, with the exception of vICP, without a tank. (And no, I'm not stupid enough to try vICP tankless.) And while it's possible, in many situations, going tankless was harder and slower. It's hard to do good DPS with a boss on the loose, running out of your ground AoEs, and having to worry about your own survival a lot more.

So while it may be popular to say "3 DPS and 1 Healer wins the day" in threads like this, I almost always prefer having a tank because going "3 DPS and 1 Healer" is activating Hard Mode in many situations.

Majic wrote: »

Introduce a boss that absorbs all incoming damage, healing it, and only takes damage by dealing damage.

Now tanks and healers are your de facto DPSers, and regular DPSers get to know what it feels like to be a tank whose taunts don't work.

Problem solved.

This is actually a wonderful idea.

Make DPS players get a taste of the feeling where you NEED to swap to a different role than what you applied for.

How do you like DEM apples?

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

If ZOS nerf DD's defense, buff all the big bad bosses so that only a tank with max health, max resistance, full heavy armor and shield, and all skills slots for defense skills can tank, then it doesn't mean the role "tank" is more valuable, it just mean gear > skill. It will also add a huge gate for low levels tanks with lesser gear and skills (points).

IMO, in ESO, tank is not the guy who wear the heaviest armor, carring a huge shield, an have the biggest health pool. Tank in ESO are people who act as a tank: taunting, position mobs... That can be a guy in dps gear, but have taunt skill slot and know the mechanic well enough to know where to face the mobs, when to run, when to block, when to interrupt...

Does it mean I think tank are not important? NO! I like dungeon that require more tactic than just dps race. But I also prefer a system where everyone can do any role, as long as they know what they're doing. The knowledge of the mechanics, the skill of the player, should be more important than the gear. Yes a full heavy tank, with all tribute in health, will be safer, and leave more room for mistakes, but if one is good, they should be able to ACT like a tank without full tank setup.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahaha NO.
Just no. I can guarantee you, with that asinine setup of a DPS taunting, I can guarantee you your healer was ripping their hair out with one hand while screaming at the screen and hammering their healing skills as fast as they could with their other hand and chugging pots as fast as they could. There's a REASON the healer-tank relationship exists, that's because the less damage the person takes, the more efficient the heals are. This is often referred to as 'effective health' or in other teams, how much damage someone can ACTUALLY take. Someone with 20K health and 30% resistance can actually take, 'effectively' 26K damage before dying, not 20K as their max health would suggest at surface value. Without this boost to efficiency it forces the healer to maintain an unreasonable level of healing that's almost completely unsustainable, and it also DRASTICALLY increases the chance whoever is tanking will die to one large attack or several smaller simultaneous attacks that burst them down before the healer can even react.
Low resistance characters are NOT meant to tank, the only exception there would be the wonky outlier build of Sorc Mag tanks that tank via bubbleshields.
The reason people are running dungeons with three DPS is because of the relationship that the faster enemies die, the less damage people take overall. Which brings me to my next point...

code65536 wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

The game is just too easy for tanks to be needed for most of it, not to mention all the negatives for playing a tank.

Needed? No.

But I sure as hell still want one. I did a run of vWGT yesterday tankless. Did we succeed? Yes, we did (which is kinda sad, that we can beat the 2nd hardest piece of 4-man content without a tank--we didn't read the book on Kena, though). Was it easier than doing it the traditional way, with a tank? Hell no. Things that used to be a walk in the park--Crematorial Guards or the titan before the Inhibitor whose untelegraphed 1-shot attack a DPS never experiences in tanked runs--were so much more difficult without a tank. And doing DPS was more difficult too without a tank holding stuff in place.

I have now done every piece of 4-man content, with the exception of vICP, without a tank. (And no, I'm not stupid enough to try vICP tankless.) And while it's possible, in many situations, going tankless was harder and slower. It's hard to do good DPS with a boss on the loose, running out of your ground AoEs, and having to worry about your own survival a lot more.

So while it may be popular to say "3 DPS and 1 Healer wins the day" in threads like this, I almost always prefer having a tank because going "3 DPS and 1 Healer" is activating Hard Mode in many situations.

This... is not entirely true. If you've run with any TRUE DPS groups, I'm talking three people putting out 20-25K single target and many times that AoE, you'll know that this isn't true.
I have ran with those groups, as a healer, and it basically felt like they were 3-man'ing the dungeon, because THEY WERE. I healed them, I kid you not, ONCE during the heal-check of the Lich boss in Vet Waywrest and a grand total of four times in the final boss, and they were all safety heals, ie if I hadn't been there they probably would've just popped a potion or rolled a few times while self-healing. Mostly I added a bit of DPS and watched.
Anyone who thinks 3DPS is 'hardmode' has not seen what three top-tier DPS can do.
Bosses die in typically under 20 seconds and often don't even reach their first 'mechanic', trash pulls last no more than 5 seconds, and the dungeon practically runs on autopilot.

Some will say that's because dungeons are too easy, which may be partially true, but I personally believe it's largely due to the insanely high ceiling on DPS cappability; it makes it impossible to balance boss health; lower tier geared players will struggle if it's balanced for those 30K single target monster DPS, AND inversely the dungeons become a laughable cakewalk if they're balanced to the other end of the spectrum. If you try to aim for a middle point, you get outliers on both sides. The span of DPS ability is simply too wide to tune boss health properly.
My suggestion here would be mechanics. If you have to, make the boss invulnerable every so often or at certain health%s that FORCE the mechanics to trigger, give them attacks that only a Tank can absorb, have them summon adds that need to be burned down before the boss is vulnerable again meanwhile making the boss 'frenzy' or something requiring a tank to draw aggro, throw in a SINGLE TARGET heal check that's nearly impossible to pass unless that single target has high mitigation, etc. I can come up with dozens of ideas and I'm sure the people here can too so let's hear em!

(Edited for typos because posting from a mobile sucks)